But it also had another “information” function, headed by Donovan himself, which had absolutely nothing to do with whipping the American people into the kind of patriotic frenzy that would impel them, for the sake of the war effort,” to abandon “pleasure driving” and donate their aluminum pans to be converted into bombers. The kind of information that Donovan was charged with coordinating is more accurately described as intelligence.
Each of the military services had intelligence-gathering operations, as did the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and federal government like the Departments of Labor, Commerce, Treasury, and Interior.
Despite sincerely made claims of absolute objectivity, President Roosevelt realized that when, say, the Chief of Naval Intelligence made a report on a problem together with a proposal for a solution, that solution generally involved the use of the U.S. Navy. Similarly, the Army seldom recommended naval bombardment of a target. Heavy Army Air Corps bomber aircraft were obviously better suited for that.
It was the Coordinator of Information’s duty-which is to say Colonel William J. Donovan’s-to examine the intelligence gathered by all relevant agencies, and then to evaluate that intelligence against the global war effort. If asked, he would also recommend a course of action.
This course of action might well be implemented by an agency different from the one providing the original intelligence.
To assist him in this task, Donovan intended to gather around him a dozen men, each of extraordinary intelligence and competence in his area of expertise. Like Donovan, they would offer to the government for one dollar per annum services that in the private sector would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because there were supposed to be twelve of these men (he had managed to recruit only ten) and because they were answerable only to Donovan, it was natural that they came to be known as the Disciples. Donovan was Christ, answerable only to God-Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Donovan’s and his Disciples’ mandate pleased virtually no one in the intelligence community. The Army and Navy were especially outraged that amateurs would oversee what their long-service professionals had developed. Their disapproval, however, meant very little as long as Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had come to believe that Donovan’s original suggestion was one of his own brilliant ideas, was pleased with the way things were going. He conferred at least twice a week with Donovan. One of those meetings had occurred the day before, which was why the Disciples filing into Donovan’s St. Regis Hotel suite found him in bed in his pajamas. On his way to Union Station in Washington, where he had gone to catch the 11:55 to New York, the White House car carrying Donovan had been struck broadside by a taxicab.
Though his knee was severely-and painfully-hurt in the impact, he managed to catch the train. In his compartment, the pain grew intense, and he had the conductor fetch a bucket of ice cubes from the dining car. He wrapped some in a towel and applied it to his knee. That helped, but when he began to experience pain in his chest as well, he knew he had a more serious problem than a bruised knee. After he got to New York and taxied to the St. Regis, he stopped in the lobby and asked the manager to send him a doctor. The doctor listened to Donovan list his symptoms, prodded the knee, and then announced he was going to call an ambulance and transport Donovan to St. Vincent’s Hospital.
What he had, the doctor told Colonel Donovan, was a blood clot caused by the injury to his knee. The clot had moved to his lung, which was why he had chest pains. The term for this condition was “embolism,” the doctor continued. If the clot completely blocked the flow of blood to his lungs, or if it moved to his heart or to the artery supplying the brain, he would drop dead. In a hospital, he would be given medicine intravenously that would thin the blood. If he was lucky, in a month or six weeks the clot would dissolve. Reluctantly-and after pressure-the doctor told the colonel that the medicine which would be used to thin his blood was also available in a pill form. It was, Donovan was fascinated to learn, a pharmaceutical version of rat poison.